Afterglow (10 page)

“I don’t usually.”

“Do you need to close your eyes?” His voice held a huge dose of mockery. “Chant? Sprinkle it with juju dust?”

She shot him an unsmiling glance. “You’re a man who likes to take risks.” His expression did a slow spin before settling into an oh-so-serious look.

“You get that from just holding it?”

“I get that from sharing a bed with you for a year,” she said dryly. “Are you trying to annoy me? Because it isn’t working. I’ve heard worse, believe me. Now, shut up so I can see where your killer is.”

After a few seconds, she leaned down and grabbed her large tote from the foot well.

“Nothing?” He sounded unsurprised.

She placed the bag in the cradle of her legs and rummaged around in it. “Oh, I know exactly where he, they, are. I want to show you on this.” She held up a small GPS device. Dumping the heavy bag back on the floor, she turned on the handheld. “He’s moving at a pretty fast clip. Hang on… .”

Dakota punched in the same GPS coordinates she was seeing in her mind’s eye, then showed him the screen.

“Marseille?” He reached for the car keys. “I have a private plane at Nice airport. If you can make it a bit more specific, I’ll—”

“He isn’t in Marseille,” she interrupted. “He’s moving west. I’ll show you.” She punched in different coordinates.

Rand frowned at the screen. “Taking the scenic route? Where the hell’s he going?”

She shrugged. “No crystal ball, remember? I presume that’s rhetorical, since I can’t see into the future.” She tapped in the new coordinates as fast as they came to her. “Still heading west along the coast. What are we going to do?”

He started the car. “I’ll drop you back at the hotel. We can keep in contact by phone—”

“Or,” she cut in, “I can go with you and keep in contact by telling you as you drive.” Dakota kept her voice level. “One is more efficient than the other, but I’m fine with hanging out at a luxury hotel. I can probably keep you updated from the spa.”

Suspicious eyes met hers. “They have at least a two-hour head start,” he warned. “I’m not going back for your luggage.”

Or to drop her off, apparently. She was just fine with that. Dakota angled her back against the door to get comfortable. “No prob. I can buy anything I need when I need it.” Which was exactly what she’d planned to do anyway.

“Location?”

The numbers in her mind’s eye glowed softly, moving as their quarry moved. “They aren’t going fast enough to be on a plane or train. A vehicle for sure. Still heading west. How do you plan to catch them?”

Rand slipped dark sunglasses on, making him look even more remote and lethal. “I’ll catch them,” he said, his tone crisp and confident. He cranked the engine over and the rental car roared to life. There was no way this was just some regular car. It sounded too throaty and responded too well to his expert handling. Then again, this was Monaco. Maybe all of the rental cars here drove like Ferraris.

“If your driving gets too crazy, I’ll close my eyes.” Dakota felt something small untangle inside her, a tiny curl of hope. He wasn’t going to take her back to the airport. He believed in her enough to take her with him. She let out the breath she’d been holding.

Reaching into his shirt pocket, he took out his phone as he drove. “Call Cole,” he instructed the phone.

“Calling Cole,” a mechanical female voice repeated.

A few moments later, his assistant answered. He brought the phone to his ear, excluding her from hearing both sides of the conversation. Rand filled Cole in on what happened at the other hotel, gave him instructions to pass on to the men, and told him to text him the lab results as soon as they came in.

Everyone was insisting they be allowed to return home. Once they were released into the wild, all bets were off as far as maintaining their silence went. It was a risk he was being forced to take. He couldn’t keep the guests and waitstaff prisoners indefinitely, even if it was a gilded cage. “If the doctors give everyone a clean bill of health, then let them go. We can’t hold them indefinitely… . Yeah. I hear you. Talk to Creed about getting some PR assistance before they leave.” He paused to listen. “Send half our guys back with them.” He listened for a few minutes, then said, “Okay. Keep me in the loop. Everyone is to go through you until I get back.

“Dr. North will give you our location and coordinates. Follow the bouncing ball, and keep the team in the loop.”

Rand handed her the phone and Dakota read off the GPS coordinates of their quarry as she saw them in her head, then handed his phone back to him.

For the first time that day, his lips broke their harsh line and he almost smiled. “Let’s see what this baby can do.”

He kept to the fast lane, and a hair over the speed limit, weaving in and out of traffic like an Indy 500 driver. “You were a race-car driver in
Hearts Run
, this should be a piece of cake,” she said lightly. He’d once told her that racing cars was his favorite gig as a stunt double, and he’d been in half a dozen movies where he put his phenomenal driving skills to the test. Those movies were her favorites. She had them all.

Now she was grateful that he’d worked so hard to perfect his craft and had never taken any of the stunts he performed lightly. His discipline and training served him well in his security business. She rolled her head on the seat back to look at him. He had a magnificent nose—one of the few things, he’d once told her, that had never been broken.

“You and Jason Dunham are friends from your stunt days, right?” The two men didn’t look anything alike, but they were both tall with athletic builds. Rand doubled for the star in an action movie called
Tropical Storm
several years before he quit the business to become a stunt coordinator.

“Yeah. But Creed put in a word as well.”

Seth Creed had given Rand his first stunt job, and she knew how much he admired and respected the director. He’d called Rand his lucky charm, and together they’d made a dozen blockbuster movies. Rand had the rugged good looks and charisma to have been a movie star himself, but he’d preferred being anonymous. He’d made a lot of money that way. And up until now, his upscale security business had been bringing in steady clientele. Dakota wondered how last night’s incident would affect that business in the long term.

Nobody had died, and sex was big business. In a few weeks or months, it would be just a salacious story to whisper to their friends.

“Do you still think the motive is blackmail?” she asked, searching in her bag for a roll of candy, offering him one as well, which he refused, then she popped both in her mouth. It wasn’t breakfast, but she had a feeling it was as close as she was going to get.

“Shit, I have no idea. If that’s the case, I would’ve expected a demand first thing this morning. In a few hours everyone will be in flight, and by tomorrow most of the guests will be home. It’s not out of the realm of possibility, but I don’t see any reason for a blackmailer to wait.”

She crunched on the candy. There were lush green fields on either side of the road, but she wasn’t interested in scenery right now. “If not blackmail, then what? A way to discredit or ruin someone?”

“Yeah. That’s what I’m thinking.”

“Who?”

“Both the bride and groom are megastars, and Amanda is young and fresh enough that something like this could tank her career. Or it could be Creed. He’s a straight arrow, no weird stuff in his life that I know of. Married, straight, no drinking, no drugs. Footage of his naked, hairy ass screwing a couple of bridesmaids would certainly impact his career. But he’s big enough that I’m pretty sure something like this wouldn’t matter beyond a mention or two on TMZ or Page Six.”

“There’s another option,” she pointed out, pulling a bottle of water from her bag and twisting off the cap. It was warm, but quenched her thirst. “A hundred high-visibility people with money to burn. A hundred
customers
.” She handed the bottle to Rand, who took an absent chug before handing it back. “Rapture is highly addictive, remember? It would take only a few more doses, and that would be it. Those people would do anything, pay anything to get their hands on more.”

They drove through the dappled light of a tunnel of overhead branches, the plane trees lined like soldiers for miles, cows grazing in the fields beyond them. There were plenty of cars on the road. They could’ve been a couple out on a relaxing Sunday drive. They’d never taken a Sunday drive. Their times together had been so short—with her in Seattle and Rand living and working in Los Angeles—that they’d spent most of their time together in bed.

“Hell, that didn’t even cross my mind, but yeah, that’s certainly another option. It’s that addictive?”

“The version we had in the lab was, and I don’t doubt for a second that’s changed.”

“A hundred people, and word of mouth …”

He wasn’t looking for a response, and she didn’t offer one. For the next twenty miles they kept their own counsel. Dakota easily kept track of their quarry’s GPS location. Whoever they were following was in no particular hurry and wasn’t taking any detours.

Rand changed lanes and zoomed into a tunnel without slowing down. After several more minutes of silence, he slammed his palm on the wheel. “Damn it to hell. This pisses me off on so many levels.”

She shifted to study him. “I’m sure it does.” She pulled her sunglasses from her tote as they emerged from the tunnel, heading directly into the sun. “We’ll find the guy.” They were working
together
. God. She never thought this day would happen. “No one was permanently injured—they didn’t receive a high enough dose. Embarrassment and maybe an STD will be the worst of it.”

He shrugged one shoulder, a gesture she took to mean her words were small comfort. The only comfort they’d get would be when Rand caught up with the bad guy.

And she’d help him.

“You have a new scar on your eyebrow, I see. I thought your new career was supposed to be safer.”

“Not as predictable, at least. Not dying’s a plus either way.”

“What happened?”

His eyes never left the road, flicking from cars to pedestrians to the mirrors in an easy, studied nonchalance that belied his skill. “My face got in the way of someone’s fist.”

Cute. “You didn’t used to get hurt as often as I thought you would.”

He shrugged. “Par for the course,” he said after a moment.

Dakota smiled faintly. “You once told me you didn’t miss it. Do you still feel that way?”

“Stunts are a young man’s game. I wanted to do, not coordinate. The security business gives me plenty of action.” He rotated his head, tilting it one way, then another. His neck cracked once. “How long have you worked for Zak?” He didn’t like talking about himself. Never had.

“Almost a year. He saw a small piece in the paper about me finding a lost child, and contacted me.” Dakota saw his jaw tighten. “People have all sorts of interesting abilities, but I’d never met anyone who could do what I do. To find a kindred spirit was incredible. He remembered me—” No, wait. She didn’t want to go there. Swiftly, she amended it to, “—and before I knew it, he and Acadia took me to dinner, asked me a few questions, and offered me a job before we’d ordered dessert.”

“And what were you doing the year in between?”

Between the explosion at Rydell and going to work for Zak?

Coming out of a drug-induced coma, screaming
. “This and that. Temp work mostly.” Dakota yawned and, borrowing a page from his book, changed the subject. “We’re still on his tail, but we’ve closed the gap some. He’s just over an hour and twenty minutes ahead. Looks like he’s taking his time. Is there always this much traffic?” She smiled. “That was rhetorical. I’m guessing you don’t drive the Côte d’Azur
every day.”

“The French hate tourists who drive like that.” “That” was a couple of rental cars going slow enough that the locals were speeding past and blasting their horns. Rand was ahead of the pack, and in fact, picked up speed as soon as they passed one of the numerous speed cameras.

Dakota compared her numbers to the GPS again. “Looks like we’re heading for Barcelona.”

“What the hell is this guy’s game? He gives a potent aphrodisiac to more than a hundred wedding guests, murders a waiter, and flees to Spain on the motorway in a low-speed chase?”

“It is odd,” she admitted, pressing a hand to her growling stomach. She reached down and groped through her bag until she found a protein bar. “Want a bite?”

Driving with one hand held loosely on the wheel, he shook his head.

Dakota broke off a bite and popped it in her mouth. “Want to listen to the news? Maybe there’s something about the wedding?”

“Unless one of the guests talked, there won’t be. Between Amanda and Jason’s people and my team, we did a masterful job keeping this quiet. Not even a whisper of this wedding was leaked to the press beforehand.”

“That’s an impossible task,” she said, impressed.

“We managed to pull it off. Private planes, shell games, misdirection. As far as I’m aware, nobody knows any of them are in Europe. But all it would take is just one graphic photograph from the reception leaked… .”

“Seriously, though? In this day and age?” Dakota took another drink. “Would anyone care that the wedding guests had an orgy? How could you keep people from Tweeting that kind of thing in the middle of the show?”

“How would you feel if you saw your mother naked and having wild monkey sex with Justin Bieber?” Rand countered.

Dakota laughed. “Wild monkey sex?” She sobered. “Was he there?”

“No, and all the attendees were of age, thank God. But roll with the thought process.”

She shook her head. “I’d freak out thinking about my mother having sex with
anyone
. But Hollywood people? They’re always doing outrageous things. An orgy would certainly cause raised eyebrows in some circles, but since the general public probably thinks everyone in Los Angeles has plastic boobs and nose jobs and goes to orgies every night of the week, it would be a twenty-four-hour sensation, forty-eight at most.” She rubbed the back of her neck and rotated her shoulders before settling back. “Then one of the housewives of whichever place would get a boob job or divorce her husband for the family dog, and the orgy would be yesterday’s news. You’ll stop the guy.” She snapped her fingers. “Just like that.”